The sloshing effects on distribution characteristics of gas–liquid mixture in spiral-wound heat exchanger

Spiral-wound heat exchanger (SWHE) is important equipment for industry, and it is suitable for floating production storage off-loading (FPSO). However, two-phase mixture maldistribution always restricts the heat transfer capacity of SWHE in FPSO. Few studies have focused on the maldistribution of SWHE. According to this, an experimental device was fabricated to evaluate the maldistribution of a novel distributor on the sloshing platform. The effects of vapor qualities and mass flow rates were analyzed at the range of 0.106–0.702 and 608.5–1491.6 kg h−1, respectively. The following conclusions are drawn: With the augmentation of vapor quality, the gas–liquid uniformity deteriorates after optimizing under steady and sloshing conditions. Heave condition improves gas and liquid flow uniformity by 2.9–11.0% and 1.7–3.7% separately, and pitch condition improves the gas flow uniformity by 0.5–3.7%, and roll condition lowers the liquid flow uniformity by 2.0–7.2% in the variation of vapor quality. It is also proved that the flow uniformity achieves better performance with the increasing mass flow rate under steady, heave and pitch conditions. Heave condition improves the distribution characteristic by 4.4–8.7% for the gas phase and 2.0–9.5% for the liquid phase, and pitch condition elevates the gas flow uniformity by 3.1–7.7%. Under the roll condition, the distribution performance of the experimental model changes worse after better and obtains the best performance at the mass flow rate of 1183.8 kg/h. At large mass flow rates, gas entering into liquid space under roll condition can bring the structural problem. Increasing the tube diameter and making the upper baffle tilt from shell to center barrel are beneficial to keep the distributor structure safe.